


Never be clean

by Slant



Category: Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Friendfiction, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 17:46:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3177851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slant/pseuds/Slant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lily is filthy. Catherine is long-suffering.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Proably wildly out of charater, but I wrote this after the scene were they all go down to the lake to bathe together and we don't really get much charaterisation of Lily before that point.

After a quick wash, Lily came out of the lake to dry.  
"Catherine dear," she said, watching Maximus, Levitas and Temeraire sporting in the water, "I find myself inspired. Prey fetch pen and ink and some sides of foolscap that you might take it down."  
"No. Nonono. No. Absolutely not. No. Not again. Last time I took down four sentences before I realised what you were about. I will not be used thus."  
"But Catherine, it is most unfair that pens are not made for a lady of my tonnage. Surely you would not have me disadvantaged so?" Lily continued in a rather dreamier voice, "And are they not handsome? And so sinuous in the water, so scandalously out of harness."  
"Lily, you don't have a nudity taboo."  
"That's not the point dear. Do you think that they might be persuaded to grapple a little? Taut muscles staining beneath scaled hides, droplets of water shaken from their wings and falling like jewels in the sunlight."  
Lily sighed happily.  
"They haven't even managed to wash the viscera off themselves yet."  
"Yes, so delightfully savage."


	2. Chapter 2

"Catherine! I have a simply wonderful idea, you must let me expound it to you."  
"You see, dear Captain Laurence was reading to Temeraire from his book of Chinese dragon stories, and he happened to remark that Oriental gentlemen have taken the art of calligraphy to the most extraordinary heights."  
"As you know, I should dearly love to be proficient as a writer, so I asked if he knew any more, and he mentioned that one of the officers he knew had brought a scroll eight feet tall and four feet wide with a single character on it back from the Orient, and that it had been a matter of some few brush strokes, and that it must have been the work of a man standing with a brush easily four feet in length."  
"Do you think that it would be very much trouble if I were to ask for a quart or so of Indian ink and a brush of similar configuration and a ream of broad sheet? I think that that would answer very well for my initial trials."   
Catherine was not imagining what Lily would write. Catherine was not imagining this because she had a very good idea of what Lily would write and had no need to imagine. Catherine was imagining three separate things, and trying to determine which of them would be the most mortifying. Was it Celeritas's look of disaproval when confronted by the phrase "unrestrained maleness" in ten-inch high letters? Being asked for the spelling of "lithesome"? Being present when some one else was asked if they preferred "virile strength" or "manly physique"? And of course, she couldn't say no. Lily would, and frequently did risk her life for her. Refusing her stationary would be extraordinarilly miserly.  
Catherine consoled herself that paper burned, and that if she were writing with ink and pen, Lily was not writing with her acid from a thousend feet. No one wanted Lily's prose etched into the landscape.


End file.
